Nicholas Mangan

For as long as the I can remember, I have been pulling things apart – attempting to understand them – and then putting them back together (but not always in the same way).

My practice is driven by the desire make sense of the world by unpacking histories and possible narratives that surround specific contested sites and objects. This investigation explores the unstable relationship between culture and nature, evidencing the flows of matter, energy and ideologies that are produced through the tension of these two realms. A disputed tropical mine, a bankrupted island nation, a geological sample of the earliest earth crust, discarded tourist souvenirs and the remnants of a demolished architectural icon have each lent material to this process of dissection and reconfiguration. By rerouting such these events, stories and objects , new forms and latent narratives are unearthed. Recent projects have utilised a confluence of film and sculpture as an agent for both formal and metaphorical excavation.

Born 1979 Geelong, Victoria, Australia.

Currently lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.

Education

2015

PhD in Fine Arts, Monash University, Melbourne

2007–2008

UDK, Berlin, Germany

2001

Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art), Victorian College of the Arts

Selected Solo Exhibits

2016

Limits to Growth, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Australia

Brilliant Errors, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, Australia

Ancient Lights, Labor, Mexico City, Mexico

2015

Other Currents, Artspace, Sydney, Australia

Ancient Lights, Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK

2012

Some Kind of Duration, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia

A World Undone delves into Zircon, a 4,400 Million year old mineral that has been unearthed within some of the earth’s earliest crust in Western Australia’s extremely remote Jack Hills.

The project gathered a small sample of the geological material to be crushed and reduced to dust, disaggregating the very matter that it was comprised of. The dust was filmed, airborne, by a camera that captures movement at a speed of 2500 frames per second. The airborne dust elicits an image of the earth’s crust dematerializing, a rear vision view of the earth’s becoming; an inverted cosmos.

In the words of founding Geologist James Hutton, the so-called discoverer of deep-time; “No vestige of a beginning — no prospect of an end”.

University of California Los Angeles’ Michelle Hopkins, graduate student in Earth and Space Sciences, Mark Harrison, Director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, and Craig Manning, Professor of Geology and Geochemistry examine zircon from the Jack Hills, Western Australia, prior to its analysis with a high-resolution ion microprobe. Photographer: Reed Hutchinson, UCLA.